My days
are mostly wasted
by thoughts of moments
that have happened
and also
those that have not.

My mind
is mostly cluttered
with fantasies and heaven,
red skies and smiling magpies,
murdered by
the loneliness of hell.

If memory is mostly
futile, the future
must be so

If everything is fleeting,
I must be running barefoot,
naked in the snow:

Toward what?
Or who?
Or me?
Or why?

Why
does every angle
seem cavernous
and sharp?

Why
does every body
fat with levity
birth such
a jagged mind?

The Thing must
fill its stomach
as much as its head,

we are gluttons
for ourselves,
we might as well be called
cannibals
instead.

Down the gallows, fiery and cold
the raven does call
in rude awakening for the dead-cow stench
of the pendulum man
strung up, black-naked by yesterday’s vice.

Today I drink milk
from a cancerous breast,
one that does mend a mouth,
but swells the heart also.

Down the gallows, the children do praise
bucolic, bent backward; allegiance
to a broken neck.

And there lies a strange stillness in the air:
the rope-halo has coiled, the serpent eternal,
pulled taut by man’s laws and quick by his fear.

Today, God is laughing
at the newborn’s cry and
today God is laughing
at the folly of his growth,
and the folly of his death.

Here, the parable of the persistent widow
assaults the carcass of tomorrow,
And one has ended
from continuing the deluge,
and Christ crucified, upon Christ for causes
a battle contested
under the root of his tongue:

I have been a multitude of shapes,
before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a noose, hurried over branches,
and those I call my hands.
I am the man on the limb, I am
judgment applauded and guilt forgotten.

And we hang our flags at half-mast.

Lily says I talk too much
and scoffs the word-trip with
know-it-all and get-it-all,
caffeinated hazard.

Now I know ****'s preamble
means comfort for the twisted,
but the rouge on his lips
is a different shade of pink
than the stain on his *******:

We're zenith straight and waiting,
the mind is cut in quarters,
here I am, a merry song
of Arvo's mirth and Mansell's
death; quit loathing,
the man is breathing.

Newton's god is clock-work,
balderdash predestined, dumb
by Aristotle, fixed Zeno third-up finding,
a paradox perpetual,
and me, I'm just dumb-founded.

And then there's the cat.

Surely, he must be dead.

But I'm still bearing two minds,
and Achilles hasn't won.  The qwiff resides,
the turtle moves,
again the rambling tongue--
is made of one, but now cleft in two.
Or several!

Surely, surely,
he must be alive.

Pandora, just open the box.

In the barrel,
I float.
loneliness of night brings silence
to thought and a stillness therein.
how far is the tread and
the Word of God?
Here he wades, stifled in the shallows
of a flooded shore; the shore
of every bloated body, every withered tongue.

Here, there is a horizon
that meets the sea, therefore
never there at all.

In the barrel,
I sink.
Down the belly
of a whale I also call myself.
Digestion without disintegration.
And what becomes of the whale
when life blooms a sea-green skin
from inside:
a stomach of the afterlife
again and again and again?

And some night,
the barrel will float
without evensong.
And some far off night,
will return empty in pieces,
some night,
when no bodies are left
and God repents in silence,
weeping on the shore of his own passing.

He, naked by the gun
polished by antiquity.
Bronze in an age of reason,
overthrown by passion.

Live by the fruit of god, and
by god, I am risen.

Nazarene, Gabriel, Abaddon, a wing
Apollo, a foot, I float on air
and water-- watch me.

Me.  To the thyself and thou art
I, I, I, beauty--

Rosepyre absence.

frozen
I sink in air, choke on air,
bloated by the birth of drought.

This is not a lake of fire.  This is
your mother, standing
at the edge of Eden, milky thighs
tough skin and swollen.

Westward, says the philosopher,
the questioner, the one
who doubts god, but knows
he is god

And takes sanctity by the mouthful--
apples to apples, dust to bodies
Evolution without degradation, Genesis: Martyr:
drive another nail in.

Of feet:
Talon dancing,
claws of deadlight whimpers
what fierce, nocturnal

we, flat feet, barefoot in the snowy dust.

Of fools:
Rampant, rampage
of madlight weakness
soft fowl, moon-eyed

we, black jesters, makers of dreams.

Of children:
Wiley charm,
naked of sadlight gestures
limbless folly, red cheeked

we, coiled by birth, the sack of infant sighs.

Of voices:
Time would swallow silence,
by the tongue, by meek silhouettes,
by shadows of the throat, of man

as he enters the cave, black body, old in
stalactite teeth, snowy dust
through curiosity in the black dream,
and birth the birth of folly one hundred times
and sigh the first whimper, at the end

I was here.

the fall
was slow, rough
bitter, red palmed.

And ashes.

glassy eyed, a slough, sweat
wet and washed, the gloom
of gold.

And saliva.

Apollo descended, Godiva
roamed, Eros marched, God grinned
yellow teeth

For all.

These, I heard,
were gifts of the grieving,
forged by the martyrs, stolen
for the saints

And time
has resurrected fools
for halos-- wings too frail
to carry the masses; to settle
for stigmata,

And golden rings
to bind the mind, as if we
had never carried the cross

Of being alive.